The present invention relates generally to systems for delivering out-of-home programming information, and more particularly to a network based system for demographically targeted programming delivery to public display devices.
Each year, companies in the U.S. spend billions of dollars on Television, Print, Radio and Outdoor advertising delivering their message to consumers. These traditional channels, while effective, often require large up-front financial commitments, demand lead times of weeks or months, and deliver a static message that is very expensive and time consuming to modify once produced.
In-home Internet users generally have an Internet account or an account with an Internet e-commerce service, such as Amazon.com and others. As a result, advertisers can gather information about a particular user as a by-product of the account process and can target advertising and other programming accordingly. However, when the audience is more diverse and receiving the programming and advertising in a less direct fashion, it is more challenging to determine the demographics of the viewer. For example, in traditional out-of-home advertising, such as billboards or dioramas, little demographic information is available; moreover, the information itself is not dynamically tracked nor can the advertising change quickly to reflect changes in the demographic of the viewers.
Thus, in view of the foregoing, there is a need for an improved system and method for delivering out-of-home programming that overcomes the drawbacks of the prior art.
Briefly, the present invention is directed toward a programming distribution network, comprising a plurality of geographically dispersed display devices that are situated in public places. The display devices are connected to a server computer by way of a communications network so that the server computer is programmable to select a specific one of the plurality of geographically dispersed display devices and deliver thereto programming, such as advertising, for display on that display device.
According to an aspect of the invention, the system can be used to identify and display from a prescribed set of programming material a subset of the programming material for display at each of the display devices so that different display devices display different programming at any given time and the programming material displayed on each display device is dynamically updateable. Particular display devices are identified on the basis of a target audience for each set of programming material. Moreover, each display device is at a known location, and further has associated demographic information based on that device""s location. The demographic information associated with each display device may change independently based on predicted changes in the target audience as a function of time.
According to a further aspect of the invention, the network of display devices can be coupled to an inventory supply system that tracks inventory for a product or service. As a result, the network can change the programming on selected display devices as a function of inventory levels. Accordingly, when an inventory system indicates inventory above a predefined level at a particular location, programming can be display on selected display devices that is indicative of the product.
According to another aspect of the invention, a data-gathering device is co-located with at least selected ones of the display devices. The data gathering devices collect information indicative of a demographic of an audience of a display device.